


this is the noise that keeps me awake

by DoctorSyntax



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bloodplay, Breathplay, Consensual Nonconsent, F/M, Gunplay, Interrogation Roleplay, Knifeplay, Under-negotiated Kink, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 09:06:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4174089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorSyntax/pseuds/DoctorSyntax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S3/S4 hiatus AU: Ruby’s not the only one who looks for Sam in the weeks after Dean goes to hell. Jo’s the one who finds him first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is the noise that keeps me awake

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Push It" by Garbage. Inspired by [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA1dKUrBliY) video by Ashley_Actually. I tried to cover everything that might need a warning in the tags, but if you think I left something out, let me know.

The faint noise of the doorknob rattling draws Sam out of his half-sleep, half-coma about three seconds before the door swings open and a small figure steps into the room. It’s backlit from the fluorescent bulbs in the hallway, bright enough to burn his dilated eyes, but the click of boot heels against the floor is enough to give him a guess as to who just broke in. The girl reaches up to put the bobby pin back into her hair, and he catches a glimpse of blonde waves. 

“Ruby?” Sam asks, rubbing at his face. He feels over-tired to the point of illness, like he’s been asleep for days, and he supposes it’s entirely possible he _has_.

“Jo, genius,” she answers, kicking the door shut behind her and flipping on the overhead light. Brightness floods the room and Sam squeezes his eyes shut, but not before he sees Jo fucking Harvelle, one of the last people he’d ever expect to break into his hotel room, wrinkle her nose at him. “Hi, Sam. You look like shit.”

“Yeah, right back at you,” he answers, though truthfully he hadn’t gotten much of a look at her. She probably looks as good as she always did. “What—how did you find me?”

“I’m a hunter,” she tells him. He can hear her stepping around the empty pizza boxes, kicking an empty bourbon bottle out of her way to clatter on the floor, coming closer to his bed. He can also hear the smirk in her voice. “That’s kind of what we do.”

Sam groans and drops his head against the headrest on the bed. “What are you doing here?”

“Getting your sorry ass out of bed and into the shower,” she tells him, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, and hey, she’s stronger than she looks. He could probably kick her ass with a hand tied behind his back, but it seems like a year of hunting on her own toughened her up a bit. “Come on, you reek of bad decisions and self-pity.”

He glares up at her, cross-eyed. “You’re not my mother.”

“Well that’s too bad,” she condescends. “Because right about now it seems like you need one.” When he doesn’t answer she adds, “I have guns and I’ll use them if I have to.”

“I have more,” Sam mutters, but hauls himself out of bed; Jo perches in the body-shaped indent he left behind like she’s waiting for something. When he just stares at her, wondering what the fuck she's doing there, she widens her eyes and makes a “go hither” motion in the general direction of the bathroom.

“Go on, shoo.” After a few seconds she adds, “And don’t come out until you smell like a human being again.”

Now that she’d pointed it out, Sam realizes he can smell himself, and can’t remember the last time he showered. And maybe if he does as she says, she’ll leave and he can get back to work.

Get back to saving Dean. Nothing’s worked so far, and he’s running out of options.

He starts to yank off his filthy t-shirt before he remembers he left the bathroom door open, and kicks it shut before taking off the rest of his clothes. For a minute after he climbs in the shower he just stands under the hot spray, letting it soothe his unused muscles. Scrubs down his body quickly, then his face. He catches a glimpse of his hands. There’s dirt under his fingernails, red clay from a crossroads about five miles from here. 

This was the third crossroads he’d been to, hoping different demons watched over different parts of the country. They do, but the demon here hadn’t wanted to deal, either.

He hears movement in the room and for just a fraction of a second he thinks, _Dean_ , before he realizes with a start that isn’t possible, and he’s halfway to turning off the shower before he remembers Jo’s here and never really said why. For a small, petty moment he wonders what she’s doing there, why she’s even bothering, because Dean’s dead and he’s the only one of them she ever gave a shit about. The more he thinks about it, the more pissed off he becomes.

It doesn’t help that his hand had stopped with the water turned to cold and it just hit freezing.

He calls her on it as soon as he gets out of the shower, barely sparing the time to wrap a towel around his hips.

“Seriously, why did you bother tracking me down?”

She pauses, stooped over with a liquor bottle in one hand and a half-full trash bag in the other. There’s a duffel bag Sam doesn’t recognize sitting at the foot of the bed, unzipped and clearly dug around in. Was she carrying it when she came in? Sam can’t remember. Jo throws the bottle into the bag of trash and straightens up, shrugging her shoulders.

“Bobby called mom to ask if she’d seen you around lately. Said you’d been ignoring his calls and he hadn’t heard from you in almost two weeks. I was home and—ah, eavesdropping.”

“How did you find me?”

She snorts. “If you can’t figure it out, I’m not going to tell you.”

“Right,” he grimaces. “Look, thanks for checking up on me and all. You can let Bobby know I’m okay. I’ve just got my hands full, you know, trying to find a way to get Dean back...” he trails off, hoping she’ll get the hint without him having to say, _so get the fuck out_. Dean raised him better than that.

Jo just pulls out one of the kitchenette chairs and drops into it, poking at the stack of books on the table. “Sounds good. What have you tried so far?”

Sam makes a face at her. _Really?_ She ignores him.

“Crossroads deal, I’m guessing, because moronic self-sacrifice seems to run in your family. Plus there’s one about fifteen minutes away, and if you’re wondering if that’s how I found you, _ding ding ding_ , we have a winner. That deathtrap of a car you’ve got isn’t exactly inconspicuous, especially sitting in the parking lot of a shitty motel. It’s like putting up a sign saying, ‘Here I am! Winchester in residence!’ ”

Sam crosses his arms and watches her, waiting for her to finish showing off. Evidently she’s done, though, because all she does is widen her eyes like he’s just not getting it. “So why didn’t it work? The crossroads. I’m assuming it didn’t or you’d be a lot less pissy.”

Sam looks at her in silence. She just raises an eyebrow, instead of repeating her question or addressing his unasked one. There’s a challenge in there, if he looks hard enough, but it’s easier give up, clear his throat, answer. “Dunno. The demon just wouldn’t deal. Neither would the one in Tulsa, or the one in Indiana.”

“So you decided to come back to the hotel and drink yourself into a coma?” When Sam just stares at her, she purses her lips and nods once, looking unimpressed. “Right. Okay then. So who’s Ruby?” she finishes, innocent as the day she was born.

“No-one,” Sam mutters, not quite meeting her eye. “Listen, just—let me get dressed?” He doesn’t mean to phrase it as a question, but that’s the way it comes out.

Jo’s eyes flick down and up again in a heartbeat, just a split second of her appraising him and it’s strange, he feels like it should make his skin crawl but all it does is flush kind of warm—though that’s probably just from the shower, he tells himself. “I don’t know, do you really need to?” she asks, just this shade of serious, and it’s—hell, it’s unexpected.

Really, he doesn’t know what he _was_ expecting. He hasn’t seen Jo in over a year, and the last time they met he wasn’t himself, had a demon in his body. It would be wrong of him to assume that Jo’s going to be exactly the same as he last knew her, but even though she’s just about his age he can’t stop thinking of her as a kid, starry-eyed and inexperienced in a lifestyle Sam never thought anyone in their right mind would choose.

But she isn’t a kid, not anymore; he needs to remember that. He has a feeling she’s not going to let him forget.

*

He’d never say this out loud, but the shower did him a world of good. The hotel room felt stuffy and oppressive one he was clean, and it felt great to be up and about, so he left in search of some food. He figured he’d feed Jo, thank her for pulling his head out of his ass, and gently-but-firmly send her on her way.

But you know what they say about best laid plans...

When Sam lets himself back into the room Jo’s sitting cross-legged on the bed in an old Misfits t-shirt and a pair of dark purple panties, frowning at something on her laptop. Her hair’s pulled back in a messy bun, stray tendrils escaping and brushing soft against her throat. In his peripheral vision he sees Jess cramming for an exam with her statistics book under a mess of graphing paper, calculator balanced on her knee and a pencil tucked behind her ear, and, god, he really does not need this kind of distraction.

She looks up when she sees him come over with the food, smiling. “Look at this,” she says, pointing to something on her computer. Sam sits on the bed beside her, and she tilts the screen toward him. “Maybe this will help us.” And the casual assumption that he wants her to help him pisses him off, like he was lost without her or something, like he needs someone to look after him now Dean’s gone—well, it brings all the fury he’d spent the last couple weeks drinking away right back to the surface. He glances at her computer and doesn’t read a single word. Then he calmly shuts it and puts it on the bedside table, and tell her it’s old news. Useless. _Just like her_ , he tries to imply.

She turns and smacks a hand against his chest, growling, “Stop it.” Her glare is icy-fixed on his eyes, and fuck, she’s serious about it.

“Stop what?”

“Let’s get one thing straight, Sam, you’re not going to shut me out. I won’t let you. I know you think I’m just some dumb kid, but I can _help_. I want Dean back too, you know? And right now I’m the only person you know who doesn’t think you should let the dead lie. So stop being such an asshole and _let me help you_.”

He half-sits, shuffling up against the pillow and she growls and slams him back down onto the bed by his throat.

Her hands are tiny, delicate even after a lifetime of tending bar, and the edges of her fingernails dig into his neck as she squeezes tighter, tighter. He could break her grip in a second, he tells himself as his throat muscles constrict in a futile attempt to suck in air. In a second, he tells himself, repeating it like a mantra as his consciousness begins to blur around the edges. In a second, in a second, he thinks, trying not to gasp for breath. He can feel his face heat up, turn red, and gasping, desperate noises escape his throat as he tries and fails to breathe through his nose. 

It’s ridiculous. Compared to him she’s a child—small, small-boned, small-town—but she’s throwing him around like she doesn’t think that’s a terribly important fact. And he’s letting her because... fuck, because it’s _hot_. Jo was never really lacking for self-possession but this quietly assured confidence is something new.

Her tiny, delicate hands are squeezing the life out of him, and if she was just a little bit stronger, a little less careful, he’d be dead right now. Dead in hell, right downstairs with Dean, strung up on the rack beside him. Her grip on his neck relaxes for a second, just enough for him to gasp in a breath he hadn’t realized he was trying to take, before tightening up again—no rest for the wicked.

And, oh, it’s worse, so much worse than before, it’s like she’s killing him all over again, suffocating him a second time, and not even her shocked little gasp as her knee brushes against his dick (hard as iron, when did that happen?) can snap him out of his slow-drift spiral away from the land of the living.

“Fuck, Sam,” she says, and her voice is _wrecked_ , hoarse with the desire she never bothered to hide when it came to Dean; at least she’s doing him the courtesy of treating him the same as his brother. Except, the voice in his head tries to tell him, she’s never treated Dean like _this_ , and something deep inside him surges with pride.

Later, he’ll figure it’s a testament to how fucked up they both are, but right now his thoughts are hazy, incapable of focusing beyond the want that slides filthy-hot through his veins. Her fingers flex against the line of his throat, adjusting her grip, and the hand not choking him comes down to brush against the line of his fly, yanking at the button until it pops through the hole and dragging the zipper down in one swift movement.

“Can I—” she begins, but it’s not a question—more of a warning, really—as she fumbles his dick out of his shorts and swings a leg over his body. The next thing Sam knows, he’s breathing in deep, gasping for breath, so focused on how she let go of his throat that he almost doesn’t notice her tugging aside the crotch of her panties and sinking down onto his cock in one smooth motion.

Sam throws his head back as she clenches around him, all heat and slick, and never in a million years did he expect _this_ outcome to their argument. His breaths are deep and ragged as she works herself up and down, the perfect counterpoint to her small, breathy noises, as delicate as the fingers that had almost just choked the life out of him.

That thought has him growling deep in his throat, primal enough to border on animalistic, as he grabs her around the waist and rolls so that he’s on his knees, Jo crumpled nearly in half beneath him. She doesn’t protest, just moans and wraps her legs around his waist and pushes _up_ as he fucks into her.

The elastic edges of her panties rubs up against his dick, rough and chafing.

“Come on, Sam, harder,” she urges—not begging, _demanding_ , and, hey, that’s one order Sam’s more than willing to follow. She rolls her hips up and tightens her legs again, changing the angle ever-so-slightly, and _fuck_ , yeah, right there. He’s so close, but something’s stopping him, holding him back, and it’s not until Jo makes a low noise and spasms around him that he realizes, her. He’d been waiting for her, and now that she’s come, he can let go.

The world cuts down to little more than the quick contract-release-contract of his muscles and the soft flesh of Jo’s hipbones beneath his grip, the way he’s leaving thumbprint-shaped bruises as he tries to steady himself using her body.

Jo’s still moving, urging him on, eyes squeezed shut as she mumbles breathless little phrases that sound like _come on_ and _just like that_ and _good boy_ but might, in actuality, be anything. He thrusts in one last time and holds, maintaining the end of his orgasm as long as humanly possible before sagging in exhaustion.

Jo’s body relaxes in time with his, legs coming down to release her death-grip on him in a motion so fluid as to seem practiced, her body still so in tune with his that they move as one. It’s not something he thinks about as he rolls onto his back to collapse in exhaustion, but it’s something he’ll remember—and wonder about—later.

His skin’s too hot, clothes sticking to him with sweat and hair plastered against his damp forehead, but as gross and uncomfortable as he feels he still can’t bring himself to move a single muscle toward the task of getting up and getting clean. For a little while he’s even too exhausted to think, but as his consciousness sharpens back around him and his brain kicks back on-line, a sharp hysteria begins to build in his mind as he takes in details that remind him he’s _not alone_.

It takes Sam about five minutes before he really begins to freak out. Jo glances over as his breathing changes from deep and steady to shallow and agitated.

“Stop thinking so much about it,” she complains, voice firm and sleepy all at once.

“I can’t just not think about it,” he snaps back.

“You’re not—” she begins, then stops. “You know what, forget it.”

“Forget the part where we just had sex?”

“Yep,” she answers, clipped and terse, and oh, great. Now she’s annoyed. If he couldn’t hear it in her voice he can sure as hell read it in the line of her spine as she rolls onto her side, facing away from him, her body language radiating animosity.

“Look, you obviously don’t care... whatever,” he huffs, and that has her rolling back over to face him, mouth open, like she wants to argue. He doesn’t give her the chance. “But I’ve got shit to do, Jo, important shit like saving my brother, and I really don’t have time for distractions. Plus, you know, there’s that _thing_ where everyone I sleep with gets violently killed afterwards, and there’s been enough death around me lately.”

She rolls her eyes and resettles against the pillow. “Newsflash, Sam: all hunters die violent, bloody deaths. I will, you will—let’s be real here, you _did_ , yeah, I heard about that—my dad sure as hell did...” Sam thinks for a second she won’t say it, but she sets her jaw and adds stubbornly, “And so did Dean. We’re _all_ going to die and most of us aren’t lucky enough to have someone who gives a shit enough to bring us back. You’re living on borrowed time already, so quit complaining and enjoy your life while it lasts, for however long it lasts.”

“How can you talk about enjoying myself while Dean’s—”

“In hell?” she finishes, her words like a challenge.

Sam glares at her, but doesn’t answer.

“You can say it,” she tells him, like he’d been waiting all this time for her permission. “Really. It’s just a word. He’s burning down there whether you can admit it out loud or not, so you might as well make shit a little bit easier for yourself, here.”

And really, fuck her. He hasn’t seen her in a year and a half and, what? She’s going to walk back in here and tell him how to deal? She doesn’t know him, has no idea what he’s going through.

Plus there’s the fact that she seems completely unconcerned about the sticky sheets and/or about the way his come is currently seeping out from between her legs, cooling and drying on her thighs. “And we didn’t use a condom—” the possible repercussions of which he’d _really_ like to not think about, okay.

“It’s called birth control,” she tells him, like he’s an idiot. “Ever heard of it? It’s this great new invention: a pill a day keeps the babies away.”

He huffs. “How the fuck was I—”

“You didn’t have to know, is the point,” she cuts off. “I knew. I knew, and I made a responsible, informed choice in the heat of the moment and you _really_ should give me a little credit here, Sam.” Her little laugh catches somewhere between incredulous and pissed off. 

“Jesus,” she mutters, getting up and tugging the hem of her shirt down. “Just go to sleep, and in the morning we can pretend like it never happened, okay?” The bathroom door slams shut behind her and ten seconds later Sam hears the shower turn on.

He’s asleep before she finishes.

*

True to her word, in the morning it’s like it never happened. Sam wakes up to the sight of Jo sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal that probably went stale weeks ago and leafing through one of the many books scattered around the motel room.

“So I called my mom,” she announces, mouth full of cereal. Milk leaks out the corner of her mouth before she swallows and wipes it away absently. She doesn’t take her eyes off the book.

 _Of course you did_ , Sam patronizes from the privacy of his own thoughts. He’s not sure why he bites his tongue around her, except that maybe she’s not Dean: she’s not family, he can’t trust her not to take it the wrong way. Or maybe it’s because she’s a girl, because her mother is vaguely terrifying, because she bears a superficial resemblance to Jess. He doesn’t know. Whatever the reason, silence hangs heavy in the air between them, like the conversation she’s started but apparently isn’t inclined to finish is weighing down on the atmosphere. Jo seems oblivious to it, or just very studiously pretending to be, crunching soggy cornflakes and flipping pages.

 _Fine_. He’ll bite. “So what did she say?”

She smirks. “ ‘Come home’.” He isn’t sure if her smirk is in response to Ellen’s constant and predictable mother-henning, or to the way he totally caved. Knowing Jo—even if he doesn’t really know her—he decides it’s probably a mix of the two. “She also mentioned something about the Devil’s Gate, and your dad, and _if he could make it out, maybe so could Dean_? I don’t know. She said you’d understand.”

It takes half a minute for Sam to process that, sleepy synapses misfiring until—oh. _Oh._

God fucking _bless_ Ellen. Maybe he can’t save Dean. Okay. He can (almost) accept that. But even if he can’t bring him back to life, maybe he can get him out of hell. Give Sam thirty seconds with Dean’s spirit to punch him for being a selfish dick, and. And to say goodbye, properly this time. Tear up the contract holding Dean’s soul, let him be _free_ even if he can’t be alive.

Of course, it’s also entirely possible that in doing so he’ll let loose another couple hundred demons on the world, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. He studiously avoids wondering what would happen if Dean’s already turned. Their dad made it through almost one full year down there; Dean’s barely been gone a month.

“It’s a good idea, but... we don’t have the Colt anymore.”

Jo’s crunching slows down. “O... kay,” she drags out, sounding totally lost. “Feel like rewinding a bit and explaining how that’s relevant?” Her gaze, questioning, flicks over to land on him.

He blinks, because surely she knows. “How much did your mom tell you about the night we opened the Devil’s Gate?”

She snorts. “Not a whole fucking lot. Begged her to bring me along and she didn’t; asked her to tell me what happened and she wouldn’t; all I know is y’all killed the demon you were after and accidentally sprung loose a fuckton more, and that Bobby has apparently been sworn to secrecy as well.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Use small words.”

Sam doesn’t even know where to start.

*

She’s staring again.

In the confines of the car it’s extra apparent, Sam feeling a graze drag heavy over his skin as he drives, but every time he glances over it’s to the sight of Jo darting her eyes away, out the window to linger over the beautiful, repetitive landscape of middle America. It’s her fingertips that give her away, dancing light, absent brushes at the hollow of her own throat. It’s like looking at her and reading her her mind, a neon sign blinking away the secret of what she’s really thinking about. She can’t even notice she’s doing it.

But Sam notices.

He notices her staring, he notices her touching, he notices the way her eyes linger over the mottle of purple-dark bruises at the base of his neck. He even notices the expression on her face—rapt, unconscious wonder shot through with _I did that, I put that there_ —when she thinks he’s not looking. This, all of it, it happens while she thinks his attention is elsewhere. Nobody has ever lauded her subtlety.

She’s not very good at pretending last night didn’t happen, but she makes it easy for him to pretend nothing else is going to, and he’s okay with that. Might even be grateful. She’s not going to start anything and he’s not sure he wants to, but he can tell by the way she’ll look at him and then glance away that she wants to and won’t. She’s not delicate about her desire, Jo, and Sam finds himself wondering how—why—Dean could brush her off so many times. He’s always been a sucker for blondes. They both have.

He wonders how long he’s going to make her wait. He already knows he’s going to give in. But Jo—staring out the window like the town they’re breezing through isn’t exactly like the last ten—Jo, pretending she doesn’t want—she has no idea.

*

About twenty minutes out from Sioux Falls, Jo blinks awake, yawns, stretches. She spends a minute looking out the window in silence, and Sam counts down the seconds in his head, waiting for her to come to a realization. She doesn’t disappoint. It only takes one road sign for her to make a confused face and say, “This isn’t Wyoming.”

“Give the man a medal,” Sam snaps. A second too late he remembers she’s the wrong gender for the dig, and a sharp ache of missing Dean rips through his chest.

“Shut up, why are we here?” Jo asks, oblivious.

Sam doesn’t answer. He waits until he spots a motel about a mile from Bobby’s house, getting them inside and settled in silence. He can tell it’s pissing Jo off, and he doesn’t care. Finally he clears his throat.

“To open the Devil’s Gate we need the Colt,” he says, slowly. “It’s lost. But Bobby has schematics we can use to recreate it, and you’re going to go get them.”

“Me?” she repeats. He sees the second it sinks in. “As in, just me, not you.”

“And you’re not going to tell him why you want them, or that I’m here,” he continues, as if she hadn’t said a thing.

“Jesus, Sam, you can’t even drop by to visit the guy? He loves you like a son.”

Sam lets his voice chill. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

Jo’s lips are pursed, her expression shuttered. “Fine.” She snatches the keys to the Impala off the table, pointing a finger at Sam. “But you owe me, big. While I’m gone you can just sit here and think about how you’ll repay me.”

She’d all but ordered him to, and it’s not like he has anything better to do. So he sits, and thinks, and when she comes back two hours later, pretty and triumphant, slamming a manila envelope down on the table, he knows exactly how he’s going to repay her.

“How does Bobby even have these? I mean, I get that he’s the most paranoid bastard ever to walk the face of the earth—pretty sure he put holy water in the beer he gave me, by the way, it’s on tap at the Roadhouse and no way is it that watery—but, seriously? Did he just take apart the most powerful gun on earth for shits and giggles one day?”

“He had to,” Sam explains. “When he and Ruby fixed it—”

Jo raises her eyebrow the same second Sam realizes his mistake. “Ruby again. Who even _is_ this chick? Another hunter?”

Sam is evasive at best. “I guess you could say that.” He clears his throat and stands, making his way toward her. He knows there’s no way she can misinterpret the look in his eyes. “You want your reward? Strip.”

Jo raises her eyebrows. “Really?” A beat later, she raises her shirt, looks at him defiantly. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

Sam just opens the palm of his hand, showing her the pocketknife. “Whatever you want.”

Her eyes darken with interest. “Take your clothes off and keep that thing away from my neck and face. Anywhere else is free game,” she instructs. “If you draw blood, you’re cleaning it up after.” Her businesslike tone should _not_ be sexy, but his dick appears not to have gotten that memo. She’s stepping out of her jeans and laying back on the bed, and fuck, yeah, he’s going to take this knife and drag it all over that pale, thin skin.

Abruptly he realizes he’s staring, not moving, so he yanks off his clothes and crowd over her on the bed, flicking the knife open. He’s not even trying to pretend he’s not hard, but he doesn’t do a single thing about it—he knows if he tries to make this about him, she’ll end it before it begins. 

He starts with her torso, dragging the flat of the blade down the length of her chest. Her eyes are closed and she’s taking deep, steady breaths—not nervous, just engaged. She’s calm and present, and Sam’s hands are shaking. Halfway through the next pass, he turns the knife onto the edge, and Jo hisses, eyes popping open. Quick as a flash he yanks the blade away from her skin, and sure enough, there’s a thin red line, not bleeding but close. “That’s going to itch like fuck,” she informs him. A beat passes. “Come on, lick it.”

Higher brain function stutters to a halt. She—what?

“Fuck, Sam,” she snaps, all tightly-coiled impatience he swears he can taste heavy on his tongue. “I warned you. Just do it.”

Tiny beads of blood are beginning to appear, popping out against the thin, raised white line of the cut. Knife forgotten in his hand, Sam tentatively ducks his head down ‘til his mouth is less than an inch from the cut, hesitates just once more before letting his tongue come out to rest against the salt-skin of her rib cage, just beneath the cut. She tastes like almost nothing at all, just clean sweat and the bland flavor of skin. A quiet noise has one of her muscles jumping under her skin, jarring him into sliding his tongue upward, over the slight ridge of the wound, faint hint of liquid copper bursting against his taste buds. He pulls back, eyes magnetized to her rib cage, where she’s clean. He’s licked her clean, which is stupidly hot. 

It’s instinct that has him leaning in again when more bright, tiny drops of blood appear like a ghost that just won’t die. This time he parts his lips and drags his mouth against her skin, teeth scraping gently as he sucks at the wound. Pulls back again and even when the blood doesn’t reappear he leans back in, does it again just to hear her breath hitch.

“God, Sam,” she’s moaning, pushing his head away. “Get on with it.”

And then he does: trails open-mouthed kisses, light sucks, up the ridges of Jo’s ribs, quick nip to the base of her breast before closing his lips over her nipple. She must have known it was coming but still she bucks beneath him, like girls always do at that first taste of breast, and long-dormant muscle memory has him curling his tongue before doubling down again. It’s been so long since he had a girl spread out beneath him like this, since he’s had the wherewithal or inclination to lay her out, stripped naked, and do her right.

Jo’s breasts are small enough that he thinks, maybe, if he really wanted he could fit an entire one in his mouth, which is watering just at the _thought_. He tries and it doesn’t quite work so he slides off, can’t resist a quick bite to her hard nipple. She yelps, sharp but not angry, and Sam brushes his lips across the swell of her breasts, from one to the other, leaving a faint trail of saliva. He bites the other nipple, thumb coming up to brush at the now-dry cut. The whorls of his fingertip catch on the clean-sliced skin and Jo practically thrashes beneath him, hips bucking up to find his, and the unexpected pressure on his hard dick suddenly provides impetus to move things the fuck along.

First things first, though, he _needs_ to get his mouth on her, bury his face in the girlslick he could probably smell from a mile away. 

The lips of her cunt are swollen blood-hot and glossy with slick. She’s flushed with sex, desire in her slumbering eyes, unabashed and unhidden. It’s hard work to get most girls to this point, he knows, and relishes how easy Jo is with her lust, sharing it without reservation or fear of judgment.

The phantom taste of blood lingers on his tongue, gone but not forgotten as a new flavor replaces it. He wonders idly what it would be like to do this while she was bleeding, to taste the heavy copper of her flow sliced through with the salty-tang of girl. The thought has him taking up the knife again, purposeful weight—

“Warned you,” he says, not much of a warning before he scores a shallow gash on her inner thigh with the tip of the blade—

She gasps in surprise. The involuntary flex of her leg muscles force the blood welling along the cut out faster, thicker, and he catches the first droplet that spills past the meniscus of the cut with his tongue. Licks up the length of the gash, bleeding more heavily than his first accidental wound, lets the metal taste settle on his tongue before moving back to between her legs, smearing the blood on her clit with the tip of his tongue and then closing his lips over the hood, sucking hard until both tastes are gone. Squeezes the skin around the cut ‘til more blood wells up, does it all over again. Finger-paints it over her inner thigh just to make a mess with it, just because she wants him to. It’s all over his mouth, his chin, viscous and warm where it’s smudged against his skin, but her heavy-lidded gaze when she looks at him tells him she’s getting off on it just as much as he is.

Presses his hand flat on her pelvis, and when he crooks two fingers inside her he can feel the tips on his other palm, raising and dragging her skin against his hand.

She winds her hand in the cord of Dean’s amulet and yanks, pulling him down to her. He makes a mental note to tell her off for that later, _don’t touch that ever again_ but now’s not the time. She’s wearing a pendant necklace on a thick black cord, presumably an anti-possession charm, and it’s simply tit for tat to reach around her neck and yank backwards, till the cord pulls tight against her throat. He releases the necklace at her first gasp of surprise, but if he’s judging by the way her eyes darken and she comes up off the bed to wrap her and around his head and pull him into a bruising kiss, she hadn’t exactly minded. She wiggles her hips on his fingers like she just can’t help herself, legs spreading slightly wider.

She’s so small—looks fragile where she isn’t—and Sam’s never tried to deny he has a type. But this? This is better. She’s small, but he doesn’t have to worry about her breaking. He can add a third finger without her asking for it and not have to worry if her moan is in pain or pleasure. He can fuck her with his fingers and mouth and not wonder if she’s going to care about being sore later. In fact, she’s wound her fingers through his hair and is yanking him closer, hissing, “Fuck, Sam. Make me come.”

Sam reaches up with his free hand, dragging his nails down her torso, and she cries out. Her muscles spasm around him. Distantly he feels a deep satisfaction at that—that he did what she told him to—and he carefully tucks that thought away for another time. Like never.

*

“What about you?” Sam asks, out of the blue, the next afternoon. He’s not surprised when Jo turns her head and gives him a one-eyebrow-raised, the-fuck-have-you-been-smoking look.

“What about me, what?” She’s half-dressed, a shirt pressed to her chest in some ridiculous pretense of modesty and one hot pink bra strap is slipping off her shoulder.

“What about if you made a deal? The demons won’t give him up for me, but it’s _me_ they have a problem with. They’d deal with you easy, I bet.”

She laughs a little. “Yeah, okay.” He can see the exact second she realizes he’s not joking; her eyes widen and she takes a step back, probably unconsciously. “Whoa. Sam. Stop and think, really _think_ , about what you’re asking of me.”

He shrugs.

Incredulous disdain, yanking her shirt over her head before returning to a glare that would probably spontaneously set things on fire, had she been one of Azazel’s special children. “You don’t see the problem here?” _No, really, the_ fuck _have you been smoking, Sam?_ is written all over her face, but if she won’t actually come out and ask that question then Sam won’t give her the satisfaction of a straight answer. 

He pulls out his best sturgeon face and nonchalant shrug. “I thought you liked him.”

“I did like Dean—I _do_. He’s hot and he wasn’t a total asshole after he warmed up a little. But I’m not giving up my soul for him.” 

“Would you do it for your dad?” he interrupts, blinking up at her innocent as you please. He knows perfectly well what a landmine of a question that is and he doesn’t even care. She’s got to understand how important it is to have Dean back. And if the only way he can accomplish that is by hurting her, well, omelets and eggs and all that.

Her mouth presses in a tight line, emphasizing how white her face has gone. “No,” she answers finally, like she’s ripping the word out of her. Tears it from her throat like it hurts her to say it. “This is my _soul_ we’re talking about here. You know what happens to souls that go to hell? Forget about all the... the hellfire and torture for a second.” She pauses. Her voice drips derision. “Demons, Sam. They turn into demons. And I won’t. Not for Dean, not for my dad—not for anyone.”

The manticore in the room, gone unmentioned but certainly not unnoticed, is the fact that Dean could be turning into a demon right now, as they speak, and there isn’t a damn thing either of them can do about it. Well. There isn’t a damn thing Sam can do about it, and not a damn thing Jo _will_ do about it. A stony glare seems like the best way to make Jo aware of this fact. He stares her down like a look can change her mind, and she scoffs, yanking her necklace out from under her shirt collar.

“You think I wear this charm for fun? God, Sam, think a little bit. Scroll back in your memory to that time you were possessed and used me as bait so you could kill Dean.”

“That wasn’t me.”

She blinks her eyes wide in exaggerated surprise. “No? Oh, right. That was a demon. And you’re honestly going to sit here and tell me you want me to trade in my soul so I can turn into _that_? I like you, Sam, and I like your brother. And I want to help you but if this is the only way you’re going to let me, maybe I should go.”

“Maybe you should.”

For some reason he’s not expecting her to actually do it, but she frowns, lips pressed in a tight line, spins on her heel and yanks her duffel bag out from beneath the bed. For a couple minutes Sam just watches her slam drawers and stuff her things into her bag. It’s all too reminiscent of a night he’ll never forget, so many years ago—another town, another shitty motel room, defiantly packing up the last of his things while his dad said, low, deadly serious, _if you leave, don't come back_. He knows he was wearing the same frown of resolve as Jo is, sees himself in it every time she turns to look for something else. He’s just not expecting it to tug at his gut the way it does.

She really will leave. Just—up and walk out the door and leave him behind, alone again. He wonders if this is how Dean felt when he left for Stanford. The closest thing he’s felt to panic in months clutches cold at his heart, but he plays it off with a resigned sigh. Runs a hand through his hair, a three-second stall while he psyches himself up for words that don’t come easy. “No, wait. Jo. Don’t—stay.”

She’s halfway through zipping her duffel, facing the bed rather than Sam, but he watches her freeze up. He waits. It’s the most he can manage, but it’s enough. The words he doesn’t, can’t, say linger between them for an interminable moment.

_Don’t leave me alone right now. Please._

Jo draws in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, the muscles in her back relaxing until her shoulders hunch forward. It’s something like resignation, something like defeat. “Okay.”

*

Bobby’s schematics are precise and exact, down to the millimeter placement of _non timebo mala_ down the barrel, and it doesn't take long to find a gunsmith that specializes in replicas willing to tackle the project. Throwing money at the problem—a combination of cash from a few nights of hustling pool and unlimited use of one of Sam’s many fraudulent credit cards—gets them a fairly impressive-looking duplicate of the Colt in just under a week.

Jo starts that week off vocal in her disbelief that a replica will work the same way as the real thing, and privately Sam agrees with her, but if there’s even a million-to-one chance it will, he needs to take that chance. Not-so-privately he tells her to do something constructive with her time instead of bitching, and by the end of the week Jo’s disheartened from her morning-to-night research on the location of the actual Colt, almost as ready to try the reproduction as Sam is.

And when, in the end, it doesn’t work, she doesn’t even I-told-you-so. Disappointment, not smug vindication, is evident on her face when Sam puts the barrel of the colt in the Devil’s Gate and it doesn’t unlock; unlike Sam, who’s less disappointed and more furious. He manages to keep himself in check and controlled, silently seething, until they get back to their flavor-of-the-week hotel room.

There, Sam stomps around in frustration, kicking off his shoes. He’s about to slump on the couch and lick his wounds when he remembers the new Colt is still in his jacket pocket, and he pulls it out. A long minute passes as he just stares at it, until rage takes over and he throws it as hard as he can against the opposing wall.

Standing across the room with her arms folded over her chest, a silent witness to his temper tantrum, Jo doesn’t even flinch. Her gaze calculating and even as she commands, "Stop it.” 

Something about her voice, the composed confidence, has Sam freezing up with some muscle-deep need to _obey_ , just a split second before he snaps out of it with a scowl, but he knows she noticed. She comes up beside him, putting a hand to his shoulder, no-nonsense pressure indicating she wants him to sit down on the couch. He tightens the muscles in his shoulder, not going to give her the satisfaction.

He’s expecting her to order him to sit down, but she doesn’t say the words—she’s ordered him once already, she shouldn’t have to repeat herself, he realizes—all that she allows is another press of her hand. Before Sam can stop himself he’s going limp under her touch, knees folding until he sinks into the plush abyss that is every crappy motel couch ever.

“You screwed up,” she says, clear, strong voice inviting no argument.

Every muscle in Sam’s body tightens as his hackles rise, immediately wanting to challenger her. Wants to jump up and scream that she’s wrong, it’s not his fault, but it _is_ , and they both know it. So instead of saying anything he just balls his hands into fists, blunt fingernails stabbing into the flesh of his palms. Idly he hopes it draws blood; it’s nothing he doesn’t deserve.

“You just don’t think, do you, Sam?” she continues, trailing her hand over the curve and dip of his shoulders like a latent promise.

He knows if he opened his mouth he would argue so he clamps his teeth together, grinding every time he’s tempted to bite out a retort. Jo bends over at the waist, whispering in his ear.

“Run headfirst at problems instead of thinking them through. You really thought we stood a chance in hell of opening the Devil’s Gate with a _replica_ of the Colt? God, it’s no wonder you couldn’t find a way to save Dean.”

That’s his limit. Right there. “Hey—” he bites out, shooting Jo a glare, but the rest of his response is lost on the hard smack she lays upside his head.

“No arguing,” she orders. “You know I’m right. You’re a fuck-up, Sam, pure and simple.”

When backed into a corner, he’s always fought: sloppy, wounding with words and sheer volume of voice rather than fists; a wounded animal lashing out more often than not. Right now is long past the time for the way he was raised to kick in, years of his father’s strict instruction inciting anger and retribution. And he _is_ angry, wrath circulating through his body on a low simmer through his veins, adrenaline flooding his muscles ‘til it feels like he’s locking up beneath the onslaught of it, coiling further and further until he snaps. Now’s the time when he usually snaps—long past it, actually—but instead it just builds, making him stronger instead of tearing him to pieces. Neither is it the deadly calm of the truly angry, but the helpless fury of someone who knows, with perfect clarity, that the only person they can truly be mad at is themselves.

She’s not saying anything he hasn’t told himself a thousand times before.

The flat of her palm rests heavy on the place where Sam’s neck meets spine, a warm weight that feels like it’s pressing him down even though it’s not. But it’s a suggestion he understands anyway and something deep inside, buried further than the shame and the anger but inextricably tangled up in them, compels him to obey. He slides forward, the muffled thud of his knees hitting old, matted carpet and the jolt that ricochets up his body going some little way toward untangling the knot of emotions inside him.

He hears her amused, quiet, “Good boy,” and knows she’s raising an eyebrow in surprise. Can’t look up, though—can’t let her see the dark burn of his cheeks at her words, she hasn’t earned the right to that satisfaction—so he keeps his head bent down, staring at the swirling pattern of the coffee table woodgrain, interrupted by ring after perfect ring of stripped-away finish, because this sure as hell isn’t the kind of place that leaves disposable coasters stacked in a neat pile next to travel shampoo and complimentary moist towelettes.

Her shadow falls over him as she steps one leg over his calves, presumably so she can loom over (behind) him. Another gentle suggestion-push of her hand against the back of his head makes him lean forward to brace his forearms on the coffee table, and oh, if he had any doubt about what was coming next, that erases it all. The quiet clink of belt buckle as she reaches around his torso to undo his pants is as ominous as it is soothing, a promise in the hook of her fingers in his waistband, the slow ease of his jeans and boxers over his hips and halfway down his thighs. She steps back to where she was before, tugging at his belt until it slides free of his pant loops with gentle resistance, and it doesn’t occur to him to wonder why until a sharp, experimental _crack_ has him freezing, flinching in expectation of a blow that hadn’t come.

Out of his peripheral vision he can see Jo, standing with the belt folded in half, hip cocked as she rests most of her weight on one leg. She snaps the leather on itself once more, consideringly, before circling around the coffee table to his other side.

He’s about four seconds from tiring of this little game and getting up when a flash of movement drop-kicks his reflexes and the tip of his own fucking belt bites into the flesh of his ass with all the force of a snapped bow string. His breath catches somewhere in his windpipe before escaping through gritted teeth with a hiss like a deflating tire.

It stings but it doesn’t kill, not yet, until she lays down three more quick snaps of the belt and her erratic stripes of over-sensitized skin begin to overlap. No discernible pattern, so she’s likely just being sloppy, but the places where they overlap are starting to burn like hell. It hurts, sure, but it’s nothing more than he deserves. Certainly a sight less than what Dean’s enduring because Sam couldn’t find a way to save him. Demons mention _the rack_ all the time and Sam’s never had to ask what it means, the gravity of the word as it’s spoken going a long way to conjure up images of wrought iron, chains, the pinkish-white marble of exposed musculature underneath flayed skin.

Her fingers at the base of his spine are a surprise as she pulls his t-shirt up, exposed skin of his back suddenly cooler from the air, reminding him just how hot he is on the inside, right before the kiss of leather on his back cuts away any temperature sense he might have still had. A second one, aimed as the other line of an x shouldn’t be a surprise. Little diamond of searing pain on the small of his back. And then she goes back to his ass because, who the fuck knows, she probably just likes it better.

Staring resolutely ahead and doing his best not to flinch, not to let on the hurt, to stoically endure the punishment she metes out justly, he hears the crack before a white-hot flash follows; it’s but a matter of nanoseconds in between, but that’s just enough for anticipation to lurch heavy in his chest before it bursts, spraying throughout his body like buckshot from a salt round. Heat like molasses coating his insides. Muscles knotting in on themselves until they lock in place.

His cock bobs against the underside of the coffee table, every smack driving the thin skin of the head rough against the unfinished wood. He tries not to think about how probable it is that housecleaning doesn’t flip the tables to scrub underneath them, god, there’s probably a million and a half germs here. Tries not to wonder how many people have been in this exact position before him, how many have smeared jagged trails of precome into the wood, as he is now. He’s not sure why his dick can’t tell the difference between _unsanitary as fuck_ and _hot as hell_ , but it’s hard enough with which to karate-chop the flimsy coffee table at this point, wouldn’t take much more than the soft grip of a hand—his, Jo’s, whoever’s—to have him shooting all over the place.

He’s going to just go ahead and blame it on the sharp hellfire of leather meeting skin. Because that’s so much less fucked up.

Christ, it _burns_ , burns like hell. Like the hell Dean’s going through right now and it’s _nothing Sam doesn’t deserve_. Another two quick snaps of the belt against his skin, laying erratic stripes of searing pain across his backside, then she shifts backward. Sam drags in breath and expels it with more force than necessary, trying to slow the race of his toward the inevitable.

She stoops forward, belt dangling half-forgotten from one hand while the fingertips of her other trail over his ass, and while he knows her touch is feather-light it feels like iron nails on an open sore, scoring thin, searing lines of pain that web outward. But even that is nothing compared to what she does next; a gentle cup of his ass and then firm massage, soothing and excruciating at once. He’s dying for her to take her hand away, but as soon as she does he misses the sensation so acutely he actually opens his mouth before thinking better of it.

Jo sees anyway, smirks. She digs her thumbnail into his raw skin, probably just to hear his shout of pain, then backs away, satisfied.

“Get yourself off for me,” she says, soft but with no room for argument, and Sam wraps a hand around his blood-hot cock without a second’s thought. She watches him jerk off for a minute, face dispassionate—fuck, he’s so desperate to come he doesn’t even care what she thinks of him right now. “Come on, Sammy,” she says after a pause, and that’s all it takes. He comes harder than he has in ages, striping the underside of the coffee table with his jizz, and it’s as if all his anger and frustration are leaving his body with it. When he’s finished, all he feels is tired.

Jo wraps an arm around his torso and drags him up and onto the couch. It’s a good thing, because his knees locked up about five minutes ago and every muscle in his body aches. She arranges him to her liking, turning him on his side instead of letting him rest his weight on his whipped-raw skin. He’s not sure how long they sit there in silence, her fingers carding through his hair.

When his breathing has calmed down to normal and he’s feeling more connected to reality, she breaks through the quiet.

“So,” she says, and clears her throat. “That didn’t work. Do we have a plan B?”

Sam doesn’t even need to think about it. “You know what they say...” he starts, turning his hands palms-up in a gesture of nonchalance. “If you can’t beat ‘em, kill ‘em.”

She shakes her head slow; faint smile of lord-what-fools-these-mortals-be. “Christ, Sam, did anyone ever tell you that you have _staggering_ anger management issues?” But she sounds more amused than anything, and he knows she’s already on board with his plan.

He offers a wry smile. “Dean may have mentioned it once or twice.”

*

“You know what I don’t get?” Sam asks out of the blue a couple days later, while they’re combing through newspapers. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Where the _fuck_ have all the demons been? I know they didn’t just leave with Lilith, but aside from the crossroads I haven’t seen a single one since...” he trails off, swallows hard. “Since.”

Jo blinks at him from her seat across the table. “I’ve been shielding us every step of the way, dumbass,” she answers, puzzled. “You think I go anywhere without cloaking myself from demons? You of all people should know better.”

“You can’t just _cloak_ yourself from demons. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh yes you can.” She snorts, rolling her eyes. “What, you think if you can’t figure it out, it can’t be figured? Just so happens there’s an old hex for throwing off demons that are actively trying to find you. So if one’s looking for you in particular—like, you know, the way that Meg one was looking for me—you’re off the map. But say you're fillin' up the Impala and a truckload of demons pulls into the Gas-N-Sip, well, you're shit outta luck.”

“And you just... happened to know about this.”

She shrugs, something indefinable in her eyes. “I know a few people.” Her gaze sharpens. “I know this is kind of hard for you to believe and all, Sam, but I’m a hunter and I grew up my whole life around other hunters. I’ve got ears and y’all like to brag. Add in that people like to tell their bartenders everything... and I _mean_ everything... is it really so impossible for me to know something that you don’t?”

Laid out like that, it’s so logical, and Jo’s worse than Dean when she’s got a bee in her bonnet. He sighs. “Of course not, I’m sorry, I just—I don’t know. If something like this exists, why don’t more people know about it?”

“Well, in the first place, weren’t that many demons loose ‘til you geniuses sprung open the Devil’s Gate.” 

“Your mother was one of those ‘geniuses’,” he points out, and she shrugs.

“My point still stands. The lore was always there, just nobody ever had an occasion to go looking for it. Plus,” she continues, “the source I used said it was for use on demons _and_ angels, so if anyone found it they might have assumed it was a bunch of crap, but the hunter that tipped me off to it said it was legit anyway. Jury’s still out on the angels thing, though, considering I’m pretty sure they don’t exist, but you were the first and last demon I ever met, so that’s something.”

*

The next night, when Jo runs out to get them some dinner, Sam watches out the window until the taillights of the car disappear down the road, then springs into action.

Those goddamn hex bags are around here somewhere, he thinks. He’s just not sure where. The most obvious place would be Jo’s duffel bag; when a quick search doesn’t reveal anything he gives up on subtlety and dumps the entire thing upside-down, rummaging through her clothes. She’s got a sawed-off in there, a couple of spare shell casings, a rosary. No hex bags. Nothing. 

Next he checks her bed: under the pillow, in the pillowcase, between the mattress and the box spring. It’s there he finds one, and if he’s right—yep, there’s one in his bed too. He wonders when she had the time to put it there and why he never felt it, but before he can get too far along that princess-and-the-pea train of thought the door opens, and he spins around.

“Forgot my wallet...” Jo’s saying, rummaging through the bag slung over her shoulder, but she trails off when she looks up and catches sight of him, red-handed in the middle of the room. “Sam?” she asks, like she’s confused. “What are you doing with those?”

He looks down at the little brown bags in his hand. He looks up. “Inspecting them?”

“My ass,” Jo asserts, setting down her bag on her bed. Her eyes flick over the mess of her belongings, which he hadn’t put back yet, and then settle on his face, hard. “You were going to throw them away.”

Sam doesn’t dignify that with a response.

“What the hell?” she screams. “You had no right to even touch them. They’re mine.”

Sam scoffs incredulously. “Yeah, like you’re so respectful of personal property. Tell me, Jo, how is this any different from you throwing out my sleeping pills?"

She's furious. "Because I was trying to keep you safe! All you're trying to do is get us killed! You get rid of those, we’re sitting ducks for every single demon out there. I mean, what gives, Sam? It’s like you _want_ them to find you.”

He doesn’t say anything, but the fact that his only answer is a nonchalant one-shoulder shrug? That says it all, and more besides.

Her mouth drops. Realization spreads across her face like the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. “Jesus,” she chokes out. “You do.” It’s like the weight of the world crashes down on her, the way her knees give out on her and she slumps heavily onto the bed. “My god, Sam, what am I going to do with you?”

Anger flares from deep inside, a petty desire to lash out. “I was doing just fine on my own before you showed up.”

Her eyes flash with anger and for a split second he thinks he sees them swallowed in black, but probably not. “That is so far from the truth it is almost painful to explain. Need I remind you that when I found you, you hadn’t bathed in a week?”

“I would have survived.”

“Well, yeah, Sam, but what kind of life would it have been?” Her eyes soften around the edges, impossibly younger. “You’re not the only—I didn’t have anyone to—I was drifting, okay, why do you think I bothered to track you down?”

He shrugs. “A year-long hard-on for my dead brother?”

She makes a wry little smile, like, yep. Should’ve seen that one coming. “You’re a dick, you know that?” But it’s like all the anger is gone from her.

He shrugs. “It’s been said.”

“Yeah, well. No throwing out my shit, okay?” 

Thanks to years of lying, the next part comes easily. “Sure.” Dean wouldn’t have believed him for a second, but Jo doesn’t know him well enough yet. Maybe she won’t see right through him.

She hangs her head a little, enough that he can’t see her face. A note of warning creeps back into her tone. Maybe she hasn’t forgiven him as readily as he’d thought. “I mean it, Sam.”

“I heard you.”

She stills completely, palms braced flat against the bed. “I really don’t think you did.” Her voice is cold. Different somehow.

No sooner does he open his mouth to protest than she’s standing, a blur of motion he doesn’t follow because he hadn’t been expecting it. The only thing—the last thing—he sees is the butt of Jo’s shotgun coming up hard toward his face, just a split second too late to block. It connects with his temple with a dull thud, and everything goes black, black as a demon’s eyes.

*

Once, when Dean was sleeping in the passenger seat and Sam was trying to get them to Bumfuck, Nowhere by morning, the car in front of them on the highway spun out of control with no warning. It’s always like that, no warning, but you never quite realize how sudden it is until you see it. Sam had swerved out of the way and then stopped, leaving Dean half-awake and cursing with the keys still in the engine as he sprinted across the road to where the car had hit the guardrail and stopped.

Expecting the worst, he’d been relieved to find both of the inhabitants of the car—an older couple—totally fine, shaken up but physically whole. The husband was already on the phone with AAA and assured Sam they’d be fine, thanks for stopping, son; but as he’d turned to leave the wife, who’d been driving, had grabbed his hand and simply held it for a minute, smiling up at him with the purest affection. Relief at being alive was written in every line in her face, shining up at him through her eyes, and her grip was warm and strong.

He could feel the blood running double-quick under her skin, the minute texture of the whorls of her fingerprints, the hard pressure of bone under wrinkled skin, and without thinking he’d covered her hand with his other one, just letting her hold onto him. For the briefest of moments he’d understood what the power of touch was truly capable of, how it could communicate so much with so little, as he stood on the side of the road with a woman he’d never met before and brought her peace simply by holding her hand.

“Thank you,” she’d said, after a minute, and Sam had nodded and let go, jogging back to the car with an odd feeling in the center of his chest.

That had been several years ago—back when their dad had gone missing—but whenever Sam thinks about it he can still remember exactly how the woman’s hand had felt in his, like her body heat had seared an imprint into his skin, and he doesn’t know that it will ever fade.

*

Sam wakes up fastened to a chair, pulse pounding in the tender side of his head. Nearly gives himself whiplash shaking off the slow blur weighing heavy over his eyes. There are cuffs—of the police-issue, decidedly non-fuzzy variety—snapping his wrists to the arms of the chair, and what feels like nylon rope binding his ankles to the legs.

He’s still in the motel. And he’s completely naked.

Jo’s across the room with her back to him, hands occupied with something he can’t quite see in an array of other mystery items laid out on the table, dragged in from the kitchenette area. Instinctively he tests his bonds, calculating how long it would take to get loose and out of the room, watching her like a hawk, trying to gauge how immersed she is in her task. Never once does it occur to him to wonder why she’s tied him up, only that he needs to get free.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Sam,” Jo says without turning around. He freezes mid-yank, cuffs digging into his wrists.

“Jo,” he starts. “What the fuck...”

The cold snick-click of a slide pulling back arrests the rest of the words about to come out of his mouth. He can see the pistol now, Jo’s hand wrapped around the hilt, thumb pressed against the safety. Her finger’s not on the trigger, not yet, but given how vulnerable Sam is right now it may as well be for all the fear it inspires, adrenaline kicking through his veins faster than the Impala down an empty stretch of back road.

“Gotta say, Sam, you’re a hard one to find,” Jo begins, turning but not moving forward, leant up against the table with her hips cocked and her palms braced on the hard edge. The gun points downward, toward the floor, but Sam knows better than to think that means it isn’t dangerous. The line of her body, the attitude in her voice—Jo means business, even if he doesn’t quite know what that business is yet.

“I’ve been looking for you for some time now,” she continues, and seriously, what the fuck? She’s been here the whole time, bragged about how easy it was to find him—oh.

Oh, _fuck_.

“Ruby?” he asks, but with more of a question than usual. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong; he can’t see why Ruby would do this to him. And the cadence of Jo’s voice is off, doesn’t sound like Ruby speaking through Jo’s vocal cords. Doesn’t sound like any demon he knows. He’s always had an easier time identifying them through the meatsuit masks they wear; something he thinks, but doesn’t want to confirm, might be attributable to the demon blood in him. This demon, though, she’s impossible to name. He doesn’t know if they’ve ever met. It’s unsettling, even more so than the fact that he’s naked and tied to a chair.

Something flickers in Jo’s eyes, but vanishes just as quickly as it had come. “Nice try,” she spits. “But wrong. Lilith sent me.” She laughs a little, playfully aims the gun at his head and mimes pulling the trigger. _Boom_. “You are in so much more trouble than you know.”

She’s across the room in the blink of an eye, straddling his lap in a fluid motion, muzzle of the gun pressed flat against his temple. Her smile is pure feral amusement, and he’s just waiting for the big reveal with the black-eyed blink. It doesn’t come. Instead she leans in close, tongueing at the shell of his ear and whispering... something, he can’t really tell what, because when she moves he sees her anti-possession charm swings from its chain around her neck, and god, the wash of his relief threatens to drown everything else.

He snaps back to reality double-quick when the gun presses against his lips, nudging just enough that he understands what she wants, and oh no. No way in hell is that thing going in his mouth. She wants him to fellate a fucking gun? She’s got another thing coming, because there’s no way.

“Here’s the deal, Sammy, you can answer my questions or you can give this gun a blow job.”

“Don’t call me Sammy,” he snaps, on a reflex, and gets a sharp slap to the cheek for his trouble.

“Call you whatever the fuck I want, Winchester,” she hisses. “You’re not in a position to be making demands, here.”

Somehow, knowing this is just Jo isn’t doing much to abate his fear _or_ his fight-or-flight response. It is, however, sending all his blood racing straight toward his dick, leaving what feels like empty, gasping veins crisscrossed through the rest of his body. Whether or not that’s the point of this whole thing, he can’t be sure—it seems a _little_ like she’s trying to get him off, but a _lot_ like she’s trying to teach him a lesson, maybe two—so still he sends up a fervent prayer to whoever’s listening that she doesn’t look down or move her hips a few inches closer.

“Feel like talking yet?” She gestures her head back, toward the table. “If this isn’t doing it for you, Sammy, I’ve got a whole bunch of other toys we can play with.” She drags her parted lips along his collarbone, nosing the fabric of his shirt out of the way. When she speaks, her words are a warm tickle of breath against his skin, a counterpoint to the gun pressed steel-cold to the hinge of his jaw. “Or I could just pull the trigger. It’s your choice.”

“Go to hell,” Sam grits out, and she gets the gun between his lips but not past his teeth, his mouth twisted in an involuntary sneer.

“Been there, done that,” she replies lightly, grinding the muzzle of the gun against his teeth until he hisses in pain, which is all the opportunity she needs to slip the barrel inside his mouth. “Bought the t-shirt.”

She must have cleaned the gun while he was out cold, because it’s clean metal, the bitter tang of oil pressed heavy against his tongue. He tries to spit it out and only succeeds in catching the tip of his tongue inside the barrel for a second, sharp grooves papercutting a thin line on his tongue. He splutters, choking, and she angles the gun downward, forcing his mouth open wider, just enough room to breathe.

His head rears back and she catches it easily with her hand, tangling her fingers in his hair and gripping tight—not pulling, that’s what he wants, and she knows it just as well as he does. She yanks his head forward and the gun muzzle hits the back of his throat, hard, sending his gag reflex into overdrive as he coughs and chokes around the length of metal. Involuntary tears springing to his eyes and his face burning.

“Now, if I take this out, are you going to play nice?” she asks, and he can barely manage the insincere nod. She slides the gun out, sight catching slightly on his upper lip, and tosses it to the carpet. He flinches, expecting a misfire, but nothing happens.

His mouth feels empty and the air he’s breathing in stale, with the tang of gunmetal in every lungful. Blood pulses in his dick, as if to remind him he’s still hard as iron, and Jo presses fingertips to his jaw, forcing his head up as she shifts closer to his body. Her cunt is hot through her jeans when their groins collide and she makes a little noise of surprise, mouth a perfect _o_ , before regaining her composure with coquettish blinks—every inch the cat that got the cream.

“Playing nicer than I expected,” she purrs, and Sam feels sick, physically ill with humiliation at the truth of the words even though he knows, he _knows_ , she was (probably) aiming for this outcome. God, they’re both so fucked up he doesn’t even know where to begin. He yanks against his restraints, thrashing as much as possible in a futile attempt to escape—the most real attempt his made since he woke up, and still he’s not sure he wants to get free. 

“Now, Sam, you promised,” she reminds him, just the slightest pout to her voice. It’s totally affected, but the effect is the same. She cards her fingers through his hair, nose brushing against his temple. “All I want is a little information. Then I’ll let you go, scout’s honor. I’ll even let little Jo escape unharmed, but I gotta say, it’s nice in here. Warm.”

He plays along. “What do you want?”

“Simple. You tell me exactly where you are in your _adorable_ little revenge plan to kill Lilith. What you’re going to do to her, how you’re going to do it, whether or not you know where she is. Everything.”

Sam glares at her. “And if I don’t?”

She cocks her head to the side, and Sam’s really got to hand it to her, she’s got the cool, calculating attitude of a demon down pat. He hopes it isn’t something she learned from him. From Meg. Whatever. “If you don’t,” she continues, “I do whatever it takes to _make_ you tell me.” She trails a finger down his chest. “Whatever it takes. And don’t think for a second I have a problem with collateral damage.”

“Here’s an idea. Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?”

“My my,” she smirks. “I suppose you’d like that, wouldn’t you? One well-placed stab and you’re downstairs with your precious big brother and we could all party like it’s 1999 until judgement day. But that’s not what my orders are, and unlike you, I know how to follow them.”

“Bullshit. Lilith couldn’t kill me and neither can you.”

Her eyes blink wide with surprise, before she visibly recovers her composure, slips back into the character she’s put on for him. Fuck. He hadn’t told Jo that. (He hadn’t told her a lot of things.) “That’s as may be, but I can still hurt you. I can still torture you until you’re _begging_ me to kill you.” She pauses. “And then, I can torture you some more.”

He snorts. “I’d like to see you try.”

Her eyes flash at the challenge, but she doesn’t say anything. Just pops two fingers into her mouth, letting her lips part slightly as she slides them back and forth, so that he can see the pink of her tongue swirling around them, slick and wet. It’s a show, pure and simple, obscene in a way he never expected of the kid-sister Jo he met a few years ago.

“Guess where these are going,” she says as soon as she slides them out from between her lips, smirk in her eyes as she scissors the glistening digits in midair.

Sam clenches instinctively and it must show on his face because the smirk spreads down to her mouth, curving in amusement. Sliding down and out of the chair she lands hard, but if she feels the jar to her knees she doesn’t let on. Then she’s leaning over between his spread legs, arms circling around him and pushing his ass up just high enough to find his hole. Cold, wet fingers press blunt pressure against the ring of muscle, firm but not forceful—not yet. 

He’s watching her intently, and when she looks up and her eyes lock with his she hesitates, just for a second, just long enough to give him an out he doesn’t take. For the first time since this all started he’s completely, one-hundred-percent sure it’s Jo in front of him and not a very clever demon, but instead of breaking the illusion it gives him the confidence to slide further into it. He closes his eyes, sinking into blissful delusion at the same time one finger sinks into his body up to the first knuckle, fingernail scratching a burn that only intensifies in the stretch of his muscles around her intruding finger. He doesn’t let himself react.

Then the intrusion recedes, Jo withdrawing her finger from his body, and he hears rather than sees her standing up and circling around him. She drapes herself over his shoulder, left arm across his chest and the right pulling his hair back slightly. Enough of his neck is exposed that she can lean in and bite it. Then her gaze catches on his torso and she lets go of his hair. With the palm of her free hand she rubs the skin darkened by his tattoo.

“Now this... this is clever. But why protect yourself from possession and then not bother to hide yourself? What? We can kill you, but we can’t get up inside you?” The same hand drops to the faint brand on his forearm, from the time Meg locked herself inside him, and her fingertip traces the broken circle idly. “That kind of distinction hurts, Sammy.”

“Do I need to say it a second time? You can’t,” he grits out, “kill me.”

“You’re going to sit there and tell me I can’t stab you to death? Shoot you? If I cut you, do you not bleed?” He turns his head enough to glare at her, and she quirks a grin. “What about... I cut off your head? I’d like to see you live through that.”

“If you’re going to do it, shut up and do it.”

She pretends to think about it. “Nah. Took a long time to find you.” Cracks her neck. “I’m going to have some fun.” All at once the arm on his chest tightens and comes up; his neck is trapped in the crook of her elbow, and she squeezes.

If he still had the capacity to be ashamed, the way his knees reflexively jerk open a little would probably top the list of things he hated about himself. But he doesn’t, and Jo’s low, amused laugh is far sexier than it is humiliating, especially with the way her right hand trails down his torso to tease at the skin around his cock and balls. His lungs are just starting to tighten, breath coming shorter and shorter, when she traces one fingertip up the vein on the underside of his cock and then takes him in a loose fist.

She increases the pressure on his cock in equal measure with the pressure on his neck, and Sam is torn between wanting more and less, too much and not enough. Through his haze he knows all his judgement has left him; he’s utterly dependent on Jo. His life depends on her ability to gauge how much his body can take, and it should breed terror within him but all he feels is a soul-deep relief in amongst the clouds edging in on his consciousness. He’s been chasing the feeling his entire life, and times like these are the only time he ever even comes close.

She jacks him off and just as he’s about to grey out she eases up a little, and the switch-up is just enough to let him come, hard. His body tries to curl in but the ropes keep him in place, biting hard into his skin. He’s never felt more trapped in his entire life—but then again, he’s also never felt so free, like he’d float away if there weren’t ropes holding him down.

Jo kneels down in front of him, slicing open the rope knots holding his legs in place and then unlocking the cuffs, taking up each of his hands in turn and rubbing some feeling back into his bruise-warm wrists. When her lips brush the inside of one wrist in a kiss, too tender to be mistaken for anything other than an apology, Sam makes a small noise in the back of his throat, incapable of vocalizing the words sitting on the tip of his tongue.

She gets the idea, though, and she lifts him out of the chair, slinging one of his arms around her shoulder. He tries not to lean too hard on her, but when his knees buckle without warning she catches his weight more easily than he’d have expected. “Easy,” she murmurs, unconcerned like she’d known that was going to happen, maneuvering them both across the room until she can unceremoniously dump him onto the bed. It shocks him how much he misses her warmth, her proximity, but he doesn’t have long to ponder the feeling because she joins him on the bed as soon as she kicks off her boots.

“How you doin’ there, Sam?” she asks, and the only response he can manage is a low groan. There are words in him somewhere, but they’re sure as hell not anywhere near the surface and he doesn’t have the mental energy to bring them to the tip of his tongue.

But she gets it anyway, judging by the way her face quirks into a grin and she cards her fingers through the sweat-damp hair clinging to his temple. “I’m not surprised, you zoned out on me pretty hard there.” Her tone is wry but tinged with something that might be amusement, or affection, or maybe both—Sam doesn’t stop to ponder too much, too caught up in the softness of her skin against the allover pins and needles sensation of his own. He paws at the clasp of her bra, too uncoordinated to undo it but hating the layer of fabric between them, and wordlessly she shifts into a sitting position long enough to take it off before dropping back down next to him.

“Hey, c’mere.” Her voice is soft but brokers no argument as she tugs him by his wrist. He just goes with it, lets her pull him against her body, glad that she can voice the want that he can’t. Make the gesture that he can’t. He spends the next few minutes basking in the feeling of closeness, just enjoying the nonsexual touch of another human being (something he gets so rarely it’s actually painful to think about) while she rubs soothing circles over his aching muscles, murmuring little reassurances into his hair. “You did so good. So good, Sam, exactly what I wanted,” she tells him over and over, and the last thing he feels before he falls asleep is the dry press of her soft lips against his temple.

*

“So...” she begins, and Sam knows what’s coming next. _Lilith couldn’t kill you, huh?_ “Do you know why I did that?”

He’s grateful, so grateful he’s prepared to play stupid. A one-shoulder shrug precedes, “’Cause it was hot?”

“Yeah.” She ducks her head into his side, and he can feel her smile brush against his skin. Then it falls away and she looks up at him, sobered. Her eyes, when they meet his, are as earnest as the day they met. “Listen, I'm not saying don't go after the demons. I'm not saying don't kill Lilith, or avenge your brother. All I'm saying is, don't run headfirst at them and leave yourself unprotected. You're a smart guy, Sam. Don't let your anger overpower your common sense.”

There’s a long, silent pause. Her words settle over them both; heavy, like a blanket. It’s uncomfortable. Neither of them are sure if she’s overstepped, which is ridiculous considering everything else, but there you go.

“And don’t throw away any more of my shit,” she adds, clearly trying for levity. “It’s a good thing I only trust you as far as I can throw you, or else we’d be in some deep shit right now.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Nope. But I don’t rightly feel like takin’ the chance, either. Have I made myself clear?”

“Crystal,” he mutters. He’d intended for it to be the end of the conversation, but Jo doesn’t catch the hint.

“I’ll help you, Sam,” she assures him, like he’d just been _dying_ of insecurity over whether Bill Harvelle’s kid was gonna stick around and lend a hand. “I’m with you until we get Dean back or we both die trying. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d _prefer_ door number one.”

He feels his face making the Dean-you’re-an-idiot smirk. It’s one he hasn’t broken out in quite a while—hasn’t had the occasion to—and it feels good on his lips. “Thought you were the one to tell me that all hunters die violent, bloody deaths.” 

“Well, yeah, but that don’t mean I’m itchin’ to check out tomorrow. If it’s my time, it’s my time, but I don’t see any point in tempting Fate. So use your goddamn brain, college boy, and maybe we’ll make it through this after all.”

He can remember a time when he’d have been annoyed by her assumption that he wanted her to stick around. Now, he’s just glad he doesn’t have to ask her to. He still isn’t sure he can.

*

Three days later Jo shakes him awake and Sam blinks up at her, groggy. She’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, probably been up for hours. Behind her he can see his laptop open on the table and what looks like a map spread out over the keyboard.

“Got an e-mail.” She grabs his chin, forces him to look at her. “Demons in Pontiac, Illinois,” she continues without so much as a _good morning_. Her breath is minty-fresh on his face, so maybe she hasn’t been up all that long. She’s still too fucking cheerful considering the hour. “Swarms of them, and I mean every single one from miles around. There’s something big going down there, and if we want to be a part of it we better get our asses on the road, pronto.”


End file.
